Howl
by snarryvader81
Summary: Somewhere in an alternate universe where Simon went to the Academy instead of River, he senses Mal's ordeal with Niska and decides to do something about it. AU, implied Simon/Mal


His feet sting on the metal, stumbling. It's cold and hard and harsh, all clean lines, grating cutting into his soles as he steps, steps, steps. The world sways in and out, blurry and clear, fuzzy and sharp, colors too bright and then too dull, borders slipping into one another.

He falters, his equilibrium absent. He bangs into railings and walls, flesh and muscle and meat hitting unmerciful steel, and somewhere in chaos of his mind he recites the books he studied at Medacad, passages describing the pooling of blood that ultimately forms a bruise.

He knows he shouldn't be conscious right now. Sometimes, when his mind gets loud and everything rushes at him at once, telling him things he shouldn't know, and it feels like his brain is being gripped in a vice, he can't control himself. He leaves himself for a little while and thrashes and screams, and then River has to sedate him.

He'd gotten a look at the syringe this last time, read the dosage of the drug as River stuck the needle into his wrist and emptied it into his bloodstream, and the CCs versus weight versus metabolism versus time doesn't add up. He should still be out cold in the infirmary, having other people's nightmares.

But instead, he walks. Staggers. Hurts himself. He tries to grasp for grace (_because grace means stealth and stealth means surprise and surprise is an advantage)_ but it's impossible, just a distant concept he can't make reality. River was always the dancer, not him.

He trips down the steps. Picks himself up. Crosses to the docking bay.

Memory echoes back at him like his mind is an empty cavern. He remembers walking this path before, afraid but drawn like a moth to a flame. The screams had called to him, the horror of what happened still alive, seared into the steel and ceramics of the ship like a stain.

This time, he isn't afraid. They're docked to something almost as bad, connected to an abyss ringing with suffering upon suffering upon suffering, stacked up into layers that overlap and blend until they're twisted up in his head.

But at the center of it is _him_. He feels him above all the rest, the agony and the despair, the complete absence of hope and a wish for death. He's the focal point, circling his mind, drowning out everything else.

Mal. Bad, in the Latin. Pain scorching through veins like liquid fire. An ear on ice in the infirmary. Someone wants to see his true self.

He steps out, into the place of suffering. All around him is noise, bad sounds, small explosions causing pressure and forcing lead out of guns and into bodies. He looks at spraying blood and collapsing corpses, catalogues the trauma, thinks about what he'd have to do to repair the damage.

"Simon!" Kaylee calls, backing up, eyes wide, gun drawn. Little Kaylee, almost like a second meimei, all brightness and sweetness and good. She's not capable of using what she's holding, just like River isn't.

_First, do no harm._

"Simon, sweetie, you can't be here! You should still be asleep! Go back to the ship!"

Fear. For herself. For the crew. For the Captain. Panic at the three men advancing down the halls, trained apes who only know how to shoot.

There's a gun on the floor by Kaylee's feet, silver and glinting and horrible in the florescent light, dropped and forgotten in the midst of the chaos. He stares and stares and stares, a second stretching on too long in his mind, and then he bends and picks it up and the weight is familiar.

He remembers the feeling of one in his hand, just as comfortable there as a scalpel but not nearly as elegant, all jumping recoil and casings flying past his arm and the stink of gunpowder scalding his face. He remembers taking one apart and putting it back together in thirty seconds, blindfolded.

_First, do no_

He raises it and the world disconnects for a little while. He observes, from a distance, as one after another three bodies hit the floor, bullets in their brains. Somewhere, deep inside, he recounts each step of a lobotomy.

"Wha—how did you—?" Kaylee begins, but he can't listen because there's still that pain in his mind, _his_ agony warring with his own, with the whispered memories that tell him he knows exactly what to do.

He wrenches Kaylee's gun from her hands and walks forward, past River, who's shooting and missing. She doesn't think it's on purpose, but it is, because she's just not capable of it.

His sister screams something, but right now things are very, very _sharp_. Fast movement is slow and sound is distorted and everything is _unreal_, like a waking dream.

He holds up both guns and shoots, bullets hitting brains and hearts, and as he steps over corpses his hospital gown becomes a surgeon's gown for a little while, because he's back on Osiris during his residency looking at his new patients.

They've all died on the table, and somewhere in the back of his mind he would like to cry, but the front of his mind is processing it very logically and forces him to be calm.

Hands grab him, and memories twist, splashing up like a drowning man from under the water, and he knows what he's supposed to do when he's grabbed.

_Broken arm_, he thinks as he elbows and pulls. _Don't worry, I can set it._

More hands come, touching and grasping and bruising. He moves, and though he's not entirely sure where his body ends and the rest of the world begins, he thinks that this must be his dance. He's finally found one.

The effects of the drugs have been pushed out of his veins by adrenaline, and he's finally able to capture his grace. He spins to a symphony of screams and gunshots and the cracks of bones breaking. His music is horrible and beautiful and he makes more of it, shattering kneecaps and breaking necks and shooting stomachs and slitting throats.

His pain provides the backdrop, the melody, growing louder with each step, until suddenly it's the only thing left. He's pretty in crimson, dripping color from his hands and his gown and his face, leaving a shock of it on the silver floor as he steps over all his new dead patients.

No more gunfire or screams or snapping bones, just heavy breathing and him calling to him, a scream resounding off of protons and neutrons.

He trails his color through an office and into a room that squeezes the breath from his lungs, old pain underscoring new pain until it curls deep into his mind and tries to push out.

There's a center to it all, an open festering wound. It wears glasses and a suit and thinks that he's one of the most beautiful sights it's ever seen, covered in the color of brutality. It would love to know his true self.

It's like a Reaver, a big, gaping hole of _nothing_. It's staring into a blackness darker and more infinite than space. Blood clings to it, the scent of a morgue, of sins long since past but still there.

He fumbles, reaching, curling his hand around the first heavy thing he finds. And then skull is shattering into tiny little pieces, the room given a fresh coat of red. Cerebral fluid leaks, vertebrae splinter, soft brain seeping out onto the floor.

The thing is diseased, malfunctioning, the source of it all. He beats it into a pulp, destroying everything, wishing he could do the same to his own. If a surgeon's cuts made it worse, maybe this would make it better.

"Simon!"

The wound is lanced, the infection bleeding out. His pain dulls to an ache.

And he wakes up.

.

River gives a hard little tug on the suture, and Mal hisses, jerking on the examination table. He knows he really shouldn't expect much from a seventeen year old girl whose only medical knowledge came from what was peripherally garnered during her brother's residency, but this is hardly the first time she's had to patch him up and usually she manages to do it with less of a sting.

She's been working on him for a good hour, stitching flesh back together one cut at a time and setting broken bones. There's nothing she can do for the nails he's missing except disinfect the exposed beds—he'll have to grow them back by himself. His ribs can't be set, either, but she promised to give him a steady supply of pain pills until they knit themselves back together.

What he'd really like is for her to just dope him like she did Jayne that one time—knock him out and keep him that way for a gorramn month, so he wouldn't have to actually watch his own body try to cobble itself back together.

River shoves the surgical needle into him again, with about as much finesse as a toddler learning how to knit.

Oh, and as a bonus, he could be unconscious for all of _this_, too. Does he really have to suffer just because she's in a mood?

Of course, it isn't that he doesn't understand _why _she is.

He'd still been a bit hazy from all the pain when he'd looked up and seen Simon standing in the middle of Niska's torture chamber, dripping with blood. He'd thought it must've been a hallucination, a dying vision, because even though his crew was storming the space station to get him back, there was no way in hell River would've brought Simon with them. The woman was neurotically overprotective even in the most benign situations, and over and above that, Simon was terrified of gunfire. He would've turned and ran at the first opportunity, considering what it sounded like out in the hallway.

But Mal had blinked, and blinked, and he didn't disappear. He let something fall from his hands to the floor with a heavy thud, and then he turned his palms up and _stared._ River started to approach then, hands up in a placating gesture as though she was trying to soothe a wild animal, horror on her face.

It was only when he stepped closer and saw what was left of Niska that he understood her expression. It was almost inhuman, the savagery done to the body, like something from a Reaver. The room dripped with gore, thick splatters of it everywhere, even across Simon's face.

He lifted his head and looked at what he'd done like he was only just seeing it, lucid yet not. The tears started before the sobs, and then hysteria set in, turning into such a bad fit that it took both Zoe and Jayne to hold him down before River could inject the sedative.

They'd had to carry him to Serenity, walking back through a destroyed hallway of bodies that were, apparently, mostly Simon's doing.

Obviously, the Academy had done more than just cut into his brain. They'd taught him how to fight, and how to do it _well._

River had been trying so hard, for so long, to determine what had been done to her brother and why, and just as she seemed to be making some progress with the scans from Ariel, there's this. He could still almost hear her on that first day, talking about the Simon she'd known. She'd said he'd only ever wanted to help people, that he was a saint, someone who would never hurt anyone.

Now it looks like those bastards at the Academy had managed to change that, too.

He understands why she would be angry. Hell, _he's_ angry!

But he _is _recovering from torture, here. Can't she take that into consideration?

"D'you want to—" he begins, as she wiggles the needle in his skin and pulls it out the other side, "—to talk about it?"

"About what?" she asks tersely, not even sparing him a glance.

"Your brother's, uh—thing. That he did today. Instead of taking it out on my already broken and battered body."

She gives an especially sharp tug on the suture. "Okay. Yes. His 'thing'. Let's talk about that, Captain Reynolds." She picks up the surgical scissors off the stainless steel tray next to the table, snips the suture and ties it. Then she throws all her tools down, rips off her latex gloves, and proceeds to glare at him, brown eyes scrutinizing his face.

"Since Simon woke up on this ship almost a year ago, he has been in more than one life threatening situation. That asshole Dobson held a gun to his head on the first day. Those religious freaks tried to _burn him at the stake._ We were captured by the Feds on Ariel. It's just been one long line of violence and danger. Yet this 'thing' never showed itself. Not even a hint."

"Yeah, that would be why we're all kinds of shocked about it right now. What's your point?"

"What was different about this situation than all of those other ones? What made him stop bursting into tears at the sight of violence to actively participating in it? To _seeking it out_? He wasn't in danger on the ship. He could've stayed there."

That _is_ an interesting question. Simon had been known to wander if River didn't lock him up, even into places he'd be better off staying away from, like that ship that'd been hit by Reavers. Still, as River said, he'd previously only ever shown fear at the sight of violence. Why walk right into the midst of it?

"Maybe he was trying to protect you," he finally says. "You were in the middle of it, and uh, it don't take total sanity to notice that you're not an expert marksman."

"Dobson tried to shoot me. I put myself on the pyre on Jiangyin right alongside him. I was arrested by the Feds, too. But all those times—no 'thing'. No, the only time this chooses to present itself is when . . . _you_ are being slowly tortured to death."

Mal arches an eyebrow at that, even though it tugs painfully at what's left of his ear. "_Me_? I thought you was supposed to be a genius, little girl—"

"My brother spends a year shying away from any sort of combat, only to spring into action with no warning when you're in danger. He runs right past me, takes out a small army of guards, and proceeds to bash Niska's skull in with so much force his brains are probably still embedded on the ceiling."

He can't resist a little satisfied smile at the memory of that. Disgusting it might've been, but hell if it wasn't deserved.

"Obviously," River continues, her lips set in such a tight line they almost disappear, "he's developed some kind of . . . attachment to you. When, I don't know; _why_, I don't know, but it's there."

"And?"

"_And—_" She leans down, eyes flinty. "I won't stand for having that attachment _exploited._ If it hasn't already been."

It takes him a second to grasp what she's implying. His eyes widen when he does.

Sure, Simon Tam is an extremely attractive man. He's all glossy black hair and pale skin, classically beautiful and out of place in most of the places they visit, too elegant and delicate for cold metal and dirt.

But he's never thought—well. Well, yes, okay, he's _thought_. Once. Or twice. Or more. In the privacy of his bunk. But there's a long line between thinking and acting.

He probably wouldn't have pursued anything even if he were normal—the man's many years his junior—but he's _not._ He's damaged, broken. It would just be . . . _wrong._

"My brother might still be a genius, Captain," River says, voice low and dangerous, "but his concept of self has been damaged along with everything else. Any understanding of his own sexuality is gone. He's as innocent as a child."

"I'm _aware_ of that," he rushes to insist. Simon is a grown man, fully developed, and pretty like Inara, but he lacks all of the Companion's sensuality and self-confidence. He isn't even like Kaylee, innocent but still healthily attuned to his own body—he's just . . . _there._ He exists, but most of the time, it's like he's somewhere far away, with no awareness of himself.

He imagines that a mind like his would be easy to get lost in.

"Then you're aware that Simon can't consent to anything. Any sexual contact with him would be _rape_."

He's been called a lot of things in his time, but a _rapist _has never been one of them. He's furious that she would even imply it, that after all this time and everything he's done to protect both her and her brother from the Alliance that she still seems to have such a low opinion of him.

"I ain't never had any with him, and I'm never going to," he bites out, trying to remind himself that River is just trying to protect Simon, even if she is overanalyzing and dreaming up threats that don't exist. Her brother was out of her grasp for years, being tortured and experimented on, and now that he's back she's latched on with an iron grip.

"You'd better not," River hisses, hand sliding over and curling around the end of a scalpel. "Because, if I ever find anything during a physical examination . . . if he starts acting strange, or mentioning things he shouldn't be . . . if there is _any _indication at all that you're taking advantage of him . . . I will _gut you like a fish._ Dong ma?"

Mal stares at the scalpel's edge, stainless steel glinting in the florescent light, and replies form on the tip of his tongue, harsh and angry. This is _his _ship; she and her brother are still alive only because he decided to let them stay instead of turning them in for the reward or dropping them off on some backwater colony where they wouldn't last a day. River'd be shot by sundown, running her mouth on one of those, and what'd happen to her precious brother then?

_You'll gut me? Maybe I'll space you, little girl, and see how long you can last in the black._

He scowls and opens his mouth, ready to reach up and twist the scalpel out of her hand, but he doesn't manage it.

"He doesn't look good in red."

Both of them drop any hostility from their expressions. River lets the scalpel fall to the tray and turns to the doorway with a forced smile.

"Some people do," Simon continues, monotone, eyes glassy. "Some people drip it. Some people wear it."

He stands in the threshold of the infirmary, one hand curled around the doorjamb, the other limp at his side. His hair is messy, compared to the compulsiveness with which River usually grooms it, but the blood has been washed off his skin and he's out of the hospital gown he was wearing earlier. Now he's in one of those waistcoats River loves dressing him up in, with matching pants and a crisp white blouse underneath.

Something in Mal's chest clenches at the sight of him. He's beautiful to look at, but at the same time the beauty is painful. It's a reminder of everything that could've been, a shadow of what he was supposed to be.

Looking at him, he can almost imagine what he was like before. He wishes, more than anything, that he could've known him like that.

"Simon," says River, with her usual infinite patience. "Are you feeling better since you woke up?"

Simon nods distractedly, stepping into the room and letting his eyes trail over the medical supplies on the shelves. "I dreamt without sleeping. Then I slept without dreaming."

He finally turns large eyes on River. "I was sick on your bed. Again."

River sucks in a breath, stifles a sigh. "That's . . . getting to be something of a habit. Maybe I should try a different combination of medications . . ."

Simon just blinks.

"Anyway," River says, clapping her hands together, "I was waiting for you to wake up. I need you to walk me through using this dermal mender." She gestures to the machine sitting out on the counter opposite, right next to the little cooler that contains the severed part of his ear.

Simon perks up immediately. "A dermal mender!"

Mal shifts nervously. He's sure that Simon was a great teenage prodigy surgeon back on Osiris, but that doesn't change the fact that he's currently _crazy._ If he were still capable of practicing medicine, he'd be doing so, instead of leaving River to fill in.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he asks.

"Yes," he says, grinning. "Once I reattached a girl's leg. Her whole leg. She named her hamster after me."

He isn't really assured, and Simon's smile fades a bit. He reaches out and pats his hand, making sure to avoid his nails. "It'll be okay, Captain."

He looks at his hand, soft on his, and thinks about everything that River said. He thinks about how, if the situations had been reversed, if it had been Simon's life on the line, he might've done the same thing.

He thinks about things that could've been, and things that can never be.

And he realizes that it'll never be okay.

.

.

Author's Note: Do I even know? No, I don't. But when can you ever resist the desire to write an AU with gratuitous slash?

Anna


End file.
